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Experts have it easy (2024)

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Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#101

Post by beyarkay »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #28

It's weird that the author contrasts experts with novices. There should be layers upon layers of expertise in between those two options. What happened to the people who do solid work in their field with varying levels of experience without being necessarily experts? Are they irrelevant?

(author here) I agree, although I only realised this after the essay hit the internet. I think keeping things simple probably helped with the overall argument, but polarising things into "experts" and "novices" isn't a good abstraction to work with.

I now think it's more accurate to think that someone is an expert relative to someone else, and only for a specific field. But that'll have to be another essay (:

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#102

Post by skydhash »

beyarkay wrote: post #91
gitremote wrote: post #49

> This explains the difficulty of training new employees when all your experts are working remotely, as remote work practically eliminates any sort of casual unguided “water-cooler” interaction. In software development remote work, the novice can learn from the expert by screen sharing how they're working on a problem, sometimes called a working session. The expert can point out more efficient ways of working, like i…

(author here) I'm not sure I agree. I certainly think that screen sharing is better than nothing, but remote screen sharing is a strict subset of what you can do while in-person. Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus. I can't describe how many times I've been saved days of work because…

In person interactions is better, but we have a good amount of open-source projects that do fine with remote interactions. The issue with remote interactions is with processes. Instead of having tooling to promote adhoc interactions, most teams will get into some kind of rigid structures because the tooling is imposed from high.

I loathe having slack because it quickly becomes full of noise. There should be friction from having another department chiming in. Having announcements in #general and #random have a cognitive load. I like email, because you can have filters and deal with things when it's suitable to do so. Slack is no where close to that.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#103

Post by xboxnolifes »

beyarkay wrote: post #91
gitremote wrote: post #49

> This explains the difficulty of training new employees when all your experts are working remotely, as remote work practically eliminates any sort of casual unguided “water-cooler” interaction. In software development remote work, the novice can learn from the expert by screen sharing how they're working on a problem, sometimes called a working session. The expert can point out more efficient ways of working, like i…

(author here) I'm not sure I agree. I certainly think that screen sharing is better than nothing, but remote screen sharing is a strict subset of what you can do while in-person. Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus. I can't describe how many times I've been saved days of work because…

> Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus.

I haven't yet tried this, but I've wondered for a while if it could be a good thing to just be visibly in voice chat while working if you aren't in a deep focus mode. Make it easy for someone to jump on and have converdation.

I've seen people do it and call it open office and it be at specific times, but I'm thinking even more casual than that.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#104

Post by chris_engel »

sdenton4 wrote: post #62
smitelli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been nerd-sniped into conjuring up a less-traveled-path technique: Portable Python on the Windows computer. `python -m http.server`. On the Linux computer, something like `wget -mkp` followed by `find … -delete` to get rid of the index files. (Lots of disks are soldered in nowadays, or the procedure might require multiple M2 slots that the destination mobo might not have. Is your company IT department happy to…

Or set up SFTP on the Linux machine, and find whatever Windows crapware that's able to connect to it... Filezilla, maybe?

Or just... put in a usb thumb drive, move the 50gb on it and call it a day?

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#105

Post by ido »

joenot443 wrote: post #58
qiine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soOo how do you do it ? ;p

Well, the answer I love them to start with is asking if they're single-bay computers and if not, why they can't just turn off both machines and stick the HDDs in the same box :) It's also a great signal if they can follow this up by noting that the Windows drive is probably formatted in NTFS so the Linux instance will need drivers to support it. Otherwise, a wired network + SMB/Samba is a fine solution too, though mu…

These days also directly connecting two computers to each other with a network cable (not via a network, directly plugging each end of the same cable to each computer) will establish a connection (I’m pretty sure it also works with USB cables but the “automatic” might then only work between specific operating systems- it’s been a while since I tried).

IIRC last I tried direct Ethernet connecting between a Mac and a Windows pc the other computer appeared as a shared drive and I could simply copy files from it (I probably enabled some sharing option but it was easy to do either way).

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#106

Post by 12_throw_away »

beyarkay wrote: post #81
xlii wrote: post #22

I find the article interesting and well written. There might be some theory crafting but it resonates with my personal experience, especially this: > The expert’s intuition is often formidable, but rarely comprehensible. This inability to clearly explain their decisions is what makes it so useful for novices to spend time with experts. I really like spending time with novices, especially if they are truly interested…

(author here) Thanks! this was my first anything published to the internet, glad to see it's been received so well. > I really like spending time with novices From reading the various comments about this essay, it seems like there's a pretty sharp divide, some people love spending time with novices, others despise the activity.

It depends on the novice IME. Some listen and try to follow my advice (good), some listen and ask probing questions (great), some ask such great questions that I end up learning from _them_ (amazing) ... and some nod politely then go back to copy-and-pasting from stackoverflow and chatgpt (makes me want to die).

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#107

Post by Wobbles42 »

nottorp wrote: post #48
kortilla wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack overflow is questions asked by novices. That’s the point

Stack overflow is "closed due to being a duplicate" and "closed due to not containing ready to copy paste code".

You are forgetting the most important ingredient to what makes stack overflow what it is: the SEO that ensures closed threads always make it to the top of Google results.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#108

Post by edelbitter »

beyarkay wrote: post #83
edelbitter wrote: post #5

> unguided “water-cooler” interaction This meme needs to stop. Knowledge transfer from experts to novices is way too important to be left to chance. And thanks to pre-pivot StackOverflow we even have considerable data on how much better it can be done, at least for white collar industries. Reducing the effort of experts to give advice, and enlarging the audience benefiting from a singular effort to write it down is o…

(author here) I absolutely agree that knowledge transfer shouldn't be left to chance, and that there should be more consistent processes in place to make sure this happens. But I still think there's something to be gained from experts and novices having a more casual conversation about various topics. When I was getting started in software, some of the most valuable conversations I had were after a technical meeting,…

> after a technical meeting .. I could

To be fair, almost any form of one-on-one exchange looks really effective when you contrast it with the average badly-moderated, way-too-many-peoples-time-wasted-if-you-ask-questions, no-prepared-agenda, in-person meeting.

One contrast I find more impressive is the valuable advice I received from people.. already dead for years. Skipping possibly helping 2 or 3 additional novices, by instead spending that time on refining a quick reply to one person into a reusable misconception-untangling guide. Useful to 100 more, for years to come.

IMNSHO, if a company is not even encouraging such soft-skills via the easy pickings (like turning their buzzword-infested PR slopstream back into a proper technical weblog), they are not missing a key - they got too many locks confining available expert knowledge.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#109

Post by dmsayer »

joenot443 wrote: post #58
qiine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soOo how do you do it ? ;p

Well, the answer I love them to start with is asking if they're single-bay computers and if not, why they can't just turn off both machines and stick the HDDs in the same box :) It's also a great signal if they can follow this up by noting that the Windows drive is probably formatted in NTFS so the Linux instance will need drivers to support it. Otherwise, a wired network + SMB/Samba is a fine solution too, though mu…

im glad that my answer was an external drive, and is considered correct.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#110

Post by gitremote »

beyarkay wrote: post #91
gitremote wrote: post #49

> This explains the difficulty of training new employees when all your experts are working remotely, as remote work practically eliminates any sort of casual unguided “water-cooler” interaction. In software development remote work, the novice can learn from the expert by screen sharing how they're working on a problem, sometimes called a working session. The expert can point out more efficient ways of working, like i…

(author here) I'm not sure I agree. I certainly think that screen sharing is better than nothing, but remote screen sharing is a strict subset of what you can do while in-person. Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus. I can't describe how many times I've been saved days of work because…

> Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus.

Odd. Even when working in office, I messaged colleagues, because it is less disruptive than walking up to their desk to interrupt them. They can manage when they are available to respond, asynchronously or synchronously. You need to follow the No Hello (https://nohello.net) protocol, though.

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